Inside the 2025 Top 100 Firms

March 6, 2025 4:51 PM

After a couple of very strong years, the biggest firms in the accounting profession as a group were a little slower in 2024 — though they still performed perfectly respectably, and there were plenty of very bright spots and extraordinary performances on the part of individual firms.

The overall growth rate for the Top 100 Firms was off significantly from what they reported in 2023, but that was driven by a return on the part of the very biggest names in the field — the Big Four and the dozen or so other firms over a billion dollars in revenue — to more sedate rates of growth. The median growth rate for the entire Top 100 was actually close to 17%, and there were actually three firms with growth rates above 100%.

That reflects the ongoing strength of the profession and its largest firms, as well as the diversity among them, with a wealth of different firm structures, growth strategies, service offerings and cultural approaches that they're using to position themselves for the rapid change that characterizes the future of the profession.

We've served up a selection of key statistics about the Top 100 and the Regional Leaders below, and you can see the full report (including our Regional Leaders rankings) here.

While 4.89% growth is well off the highs of 2022 and 2023, that's largely due to slower performance at a relatively small percentage of firms — those above $1 billion in revenue — whose sheer size gives them outside influence on the numbers.

When the top cohort of 16 billion-dollar firms is separated out, the strength of the Top 100 Firms is more clearly revealed, with firms below $100 million in revenue and firms between $100 million and $1 billion growing 13-14%.

As a further example of the strength of the Top 100, it's worth pointing out that three of the fastest-growing firms on the list grew at rates faster than the 100% posted by the fastest-growing firm in the Top 100 last year. All three are private-equity-backed platforms for accounting firms, who have been using their capital to fuel truly astonishing growth rates.

While the highs may be higher in this year's report, that doesn't mean everyone is hitting them. Among all the firms on our Top 100 Firms and Regional Leaders lists, a smaller portion posted growth above 20% — though still many more than did so prior to 2021.

The billion-dollar cohort remained steady at 16, despite adding Eisner Advisory Group to its ranks — because of the combination of Marcum and CBIZ late in 2024.

You could be forgiven for thinking that we had simply reproduced last year's version of this chart, since the top four service lines here are in the same order, with client advisory services once again being the area where the most Top 100 Firms were seeing growth. Only the fifth entry is different for this year, with business valuations replacing M&A.

The previous slide represents areas where the Top 100 are seeing any growth at all; this slide shows the percentage of firms that reported CAS as their single fastest-growing service. It's particularly worth pointing out that it's extremely rare for so many firms to all report the same area; usually the most common service might only get as high as 5% of firms converging on it.

The overall fee split for the Top 100 remained much the same, with consulting in the lead because of its heavy weighting among the billion-dollar firms, where it accounts for 43% of revenues. It was down to 41% for the overall Top 100 this year, largely because we broke out CAS as its own separate fee split category. While the overall numbers there were relatively low, we expect it to grow significantly over the next several years.

Revenue per employee inched up for every cohort of the Top 100 Firm, but more important, it begins to demonstrate a major differentiator between the billion-dollar firms and the rest.

Revenue per partner is where the differentiation really shows up. It remained more or less the same in 2024 — but shows the major gap between the billion-dollar firms and those below $1 billion.

A similar gap shows up when you look at the number of employees per partner that each firm has — each partner in the billion-dollar cohort is leveraging a significantly larger staff than those at smaller firms.

While accounting firms continue to hire more employees, the rate of growth has slowed over the past three years, particularly among the largest firms (many of whom actually laid off staff in 2024, often from their consulting/advisory practices).

The rate at which larger firms were adding partners dropped drastically in 2024 — especially for the billion-dollar firms — but it rebounded at firms under $100 million in revenue.

Non-equity partners

Non-equity partners are fairly rare among the largest firms, representing just 9% of the total number of partners. But they get more common as firms get smaller, at roughly 30% of the combined total for firms with between $100 million and $1 billion in revenue, and 44% of the partnership figures at firms under $100 million.